


Au fond, je crois que la Terre est ronde

by emimix3



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 4L Trophy, ABC Challenge, Africa, America, Asia, Beach Holidays, Cars, Established Relationship, Europe, Ficlet Collection, Friendship, Future Fic, Hiking, Honeymoon, Kid Fic, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Meet the Family, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parenthood, Post-Canon, Social Media, Team as Family, Thanksgiving, World Travel, Zimbits Bingo, car race
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2021-04-15
Packaged: 2021-04-24 23:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 19,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emimix3/pseuds/emimix3
Summary: "Deep down, I think the Earth is round, for only one good reason, after having been all around the world, all we want is to be at home"
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 132
Kudos: 169





	1. Allston – May 2017

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from Orelsan's [La Terre est Ronde](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGdhZyS2ozo)
> 
> This fic will contain prompts from the [Zimbits Bingo Event](https://zimbitsbingo.tumblr.com/) & will be updated twice a week

After lunch, both Jack’s and Bitty’s parents made their way to the airport to go back to their respective homes.

And Jack and Bitty, still in front of the Boston restaurant, right where the Lyft had picked their parents up- well. They didn’t feel like going to Providence right away. Instead, hand in hand, with the help of Google Maps until they were into more familiar streets, they walked all the way up to the student neighbourhood of the city until they stopped in front of a run-down house that they knew so much, even if they had never lived here.

Shitty was on the porch, in his underwear, smoking.

“Bits, Jack! Survived lunch with the ‘rents?”

“No. We are dead.” Jack deadpanned. “You’re seeing our ghosts, Shitty.”

“Shut the fuck up ghosts don’t exist,” they heard Ransom yell from inside the Haus 2.0.

They all had seen each other this morning, for Bitty’s graduation. They had all taken some time off to see Bitty turning the page on a big chapter of his life, and Bitty wouldn’t be more grateful to have them all here for that.

“Holster and Ransom are going to set up the couch for you both, because believe me, we’re going to drink so much tonight that you won’t be able to drive back to Providence until next week,” Shitty told them. “And we stocked the kitchen from top to bottom so that Bitty can make his magic happen.”

“No, wait!” they heard – Holster had gotten his head out of the window, and he was shouting. “What if we _put the tents in the yard to camp._”

“Oh my god we have to put the tents in the yard to camp!” Ransom, still inside, also shouted.

“Holy macaroni, _yes_!” Shitty freaked out.

“We can maybe make a campfire,” Jack proposed. “I mean. I suppose we legally can? I hope?”

At this moment, Lardo bolted out of the house, an empty bag in hand.

“I heard campfire. I’m going to buy what we need to make S’mores and grilled marshmallows and bananas.”

“Bitty, we need camping food,” Shitty stated, grave.

Bitty just laughed at all that. Maybe a page just turned, but, really, his life wouldn’t be much different from before.


	2. Bahamas - June 2017

Their first couple holidays was ten days in the Bahamas. It was to celebrate Bitty’s graduation, so he insisted – he _needed_ some sun and warm and sea, _and_ to see his boyfriend in a bathing suit, seductively getting out of the water of the pool (because yes, there is a turquoise blue ocean two feet away but Bitty still wanted a pool) just to bring him a sinful cocktail of a non-natural color full of unknown alcohols.

He was a man easy to satisfy.

Of course, once here, Bitty had quickly managed to tan but Jack’s white skin turned lobster red on the first day on the beach. The first night, Bitty had spent one hour massaging lotion onto his boyfriend’s back to try to appease the burn. He had to do it again the second night, and the third, and then the sunburn turned into a nice tan but the massages remained. Not quite the same ones, though.

Between some scuba diving lessons and helicopters tours, they just enjoyed the moment as it was. The Falconers pre-season training was beginning soon, Bitty was going to start job hunting the moment they were back home and would up the number of YouTube videos in the meantime ; they both had to go to Québec, Bitty to Georgia, Jack had so many off-season PR events this summer… They wouldn’t see each other much, even if they now lived together.

So they enjoyed each other, made the most of the last peaceful week they had, and knew that it was only the beginning of what was to come.


	3. Colorado - August 2017

[**r/onebag**](https://www.reddit.com/r/onebag/) • Posted by u/jlbz_01 2 days ago

**First time backpacking for me and my boyfriend – on a hiking trip**  
** Seeking Recommendation/Help  **

Hello everyone – I travel a lot for work, at least weekly for half of the year, for very short trips every time. I although never really onebagged; I need a LOT of gear for my line of work, so I’ve always travelled with a small suitcase, + a big work gear bag in which I also put the things that don’t fit in my suitcase. My boyfriend never travelled a lot before, only for a night or two, but he’s the kind of person who needs a full suitcase + another “just in case”

We’re athletic and go on a lot of day-long hikes, and we had one week free before work so we decided to try for a longer hike in Colorado. We plan: a three-night stay in a hotel, with day-long hikes around it, then a four days itinerary hoping inn-to-inn, then one last night at the first hotel. We’re flying there, and not camping. (Maybe later? I’ve never really camp, but I guess I’ll want to try it on shorter trips close to home first). I have no experience in more than one-day long hikes, and he has more outdoorsy experiences than I have but nothing comparable (he was a summer camp’s counsellor, but with kids, so camping was a one-night-of-the-trip-right-next-to-the-cabins experience)

We’re leaving next week (for the last week of August), and we read a lot of tips regarding the ideal gear to buy for hiking (shoes, pants, shirts…) and one-bag tips, so here is our bags as of now; all fit, but they’re a bit heavy, so if you have tips regarding what we should drop we’ll gladly listen to them.

[imgur link. The picture is two bagpacks on a bed, the one of the left is dark blue and the one of the right, light red. In front of them, are displayed clothes, underwear, shoes, phone cables, cameras, camping gear such as bottles, rainjackets, flashlights…)]

**My bag, including what I will be wearing **

  * Rei Ruckpack 40
  * Tortuga daypack in it for the small day-hikes
  * 1 pair of pants (Patagonia Terrebone joggers)
  * 1 pair of shorts (Quicksilver amphibians)
  * 3 running Tees + 1 longsleeved one + 1 comfier to sleep in
  * 1 hoodie
  * 5 boxers (Patagonia), 5 pairs of hiking socks, 1 cap
  * Shoes: Salomon X (yes, they’re yellow and you find them ugly, I _know_.), some cheap sandals
  * Titanium Bottle, 1L
  * Headlamp, 2 cheap rainers (mine and his)
  * Small first aid kit
  * Cuitochettes (sporks?), collapsing plates, life straws (mine and his)
  * Journal and pen, map, compass
  * Phone, passport, wallet, papers
  * Photography gear (Sony Alpha 6300 – my full camera gear list can be found here [link to r/askphotography]

**His bag, including what he will be wearing**

  * Kelty Redwing 40
  * Osprey daypack for the small day-hikes
  * 1 pair of pants (Merino)
  * 2 pair of shorts (Patagonia Quandary, plus booty shorts he sleeps in)
  * 2 running Tee + 3 longsleeved + 1 comfier to sleep in
  * 4 boxers (Patagonia), 5 pairs of hiking socks, 1 cap
  * 1 pair of swimming trunks
  * 1 fleece jacket
  * Shoes: Lasportiva Wildcat, sandals
  * Collapsing titanium bottle, 1,2L
  * 2 phone chargers, 2 power banks, earphones, solar battery (mine and his), headlamp
  * Toiletry kit (mine and his), small first aid kit
  * Phone, passport, wallet
  * Video gear (It’s a GH5, no idea for the mic etc he uses. I can ask him if people are interessed.)

First aid kits have gauze, band-aids, tissues, personal meds+ibuprofen, Neosporin, mosquito repellent.

Toiletry bag has toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo bar and soap bar, bite cream, sunscreen, sunglasses, and (… big) lenses case and solution, brush, q-tips, shaving cream, condoms and lube. We’re flying so we’re buying razors/deodorant/scissors/knives there.

He’s thinking about getting some amphibian shorts also (instead of his Quandary+swimming trunks) but he’s not sure about the comfort, and if you have an idea to replace our fleece jacket/hoodie by light jackets for summer mountain hikes we’re listening.

The cameras and their gears fit in our daypacks along with the bottles/first aid kits/etc, and we’ll only have to hike with the full bags during the days we’re hiking inn-to-inn.

We each have a first-aid kit and he’s got the toiletry bag, but the things are so big… We’d like to try to gain as much space as we can so there’s more room in his Kelty to store food.

EDIT: thanks everyone for your tips ! The contacts gear does take a lot of space, but I won’t ditch the contacts for glasses, as the glasses I have don’t fit my current prescription (it’s okay for an hour or two but NOT a full day), but I’ll keep it in mind for next time and update them. We ditched the lube bottle for packets, and indeed, you’re right, our shaving cream bottle is way too big – we could find an alternative but we’ll go without shaving for a week. You won’t see the difference on my boyfriend anyway eh. Also we didn’t think it’d probably won’t go past security at the airport. We’re looking through the links you gave us regarding light jackets and laundry detergents in soap bars, so we’re taking less shirts.

I updated my post on r/Askphotography to also list my boyfriend’s full camera gear.

And my yellow shoes are the bomb thank you very much.


	4. D.C. (Charity Gala) - October 2017

“It was…”

“Awful. It was awful, Bits, you can say it.”

“I hated every single minute of it, Jack.”

Jack laughed at that, as he was taking of his tie.

They had spent the night at a gala in Washington D.C., and, truly, that was boring as hell. Jack was here as a member of the Zimmermann Foundation, not as a Falconer (and thus, none of his teammates was here, they were all at home in Providence enjoying the fall as it should be enjoyed, with hot tea and fuzzy pajamas).

“Well, there were good things, at least,” Jack tried as he sat on the bed, looking at Bitty who was busy trying to take off his dress shoes.

“Oh? Do tell? The buffet was a _joke_, Jack.” (indeed, it had been a joke; they stopped at the first fast-food place they found before going back to their hotel)

“Well… I got to see you in a suit, for one. And… Well, that’s all, but that’s good enough, eh?”

Jack tried not to laugh when he saw Bitty turn beet red. But indeed – Bitty in a nice, tailored suit was a sight, really, one that Jack didn’t get to see every day. And yet, suits fit Bitty so well. He wasn’t for plain, black suits, but instead had worked with the tailor to work out an outfit that would work for both Bitty’s personality and the Black-Tie dress code, and Jack had fell in love all over again when he saw the finished product. (And he had even gotten an appointment with the tailor to get a creative black-tie suit himself.)

“You stop it, Mister Zimmermann,” Bitty said, batting his hand in embarrassment. “You’re the hot one in suits. There are entire _photoshoots_ of you in suits out there.”

“Mmh… Maybe we’re _both_ handsome,” Jack admitted, and he beckoned Bitty to come closer so that he was standing between his legs and Jack could put his hands around his waist and look up at him. “I love you.”

“I don’t sport untoward feelings for you either, Mister,” Bitty joked, carding his fingers in Jack’s hair.

“Maybe we should wear suits more often, eh?”

“Maybe we should. Any event in the works that would require a black tie from the both of us?”

Of course, there was one. Jack was thinking about this event from the moment Bitty graduated. Hell, he was thinking about it since they came out. Since Bitty agreed to be his boyfriend, since they hold each other under the fireworks in Madison, since they first kissed, even. He knew that Bitty was thinking about it, too. They had talked about it, in hushed tones and half-said words, but in _when_’s and in _we’re going to_’s. Bitty had admitted he’d like better being asked than asking himself, and Jack had admitted that he’d like it to happen sooner rather than later.

But right now, they were both exhausted and stressed, because they had spent the night networking at a gala in uncomfortable shoes, and the season had just started and Bitty was juggling between his work on his YouTube channel and giving classes at a cooking school where he had just begun so it was hard to find a rhythm, and they were just for one night in a not-so great hotel room in Washington D.C. that smelled funny and with sheets that itched, and the set of ring they had chosen more or less together was hidden at home, waiting for its moment.

It wasn’t now. Soon, but not now.

“Maybe I have an idea,” Jack said, looking straight into Bitty’s eyes. “I’ll tell you more once I know the details.”

And then, he added:

“It shouldn’t be much longer.”

Bitty smiled at him.

“I can’t wait, love.”


	5. Eggton Inn (Rhode Island) - November 2017

**Samgreat dream team**

[Saturday, 2:03 AM]

_Bitty_  
>> [Picture: Selfie of Jack and Bitty, sitting on a bed - they’re both grinning, and holding out their hands in front of them, that are sporting matching silver rings.]  
>> I said “Well, okay, I’ll settle down for that I guess”

_Holster  
_> wow, decent

_Ransom_  
> that’s an okay event

_Jack_  
> yeah, I asked because I had nothing better to do tonight

_Shitty_  
> that’s valid

_Holster_  
> 🥱

_Jack_  
> Okay, can we cut the blasé play because I really want to share about how excited and happy and in love I am right now

_Bitty_  
>> Haha, I thought I’d be the one who’d break first

_Shitty_  
> YES, WE CAN, LET ME LOOK FOR ALL THE RAINBOW AND CONFETTI AND HAPPY CRYING GIFS I HAVE IN STOCK

_Holster  
_> 🎆🎆🎇🎇🎇🎇🧨✨✨🎉🎉🎊🎊🧨🎇🎆🎆🎇🎇🎇  
> ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🌈🌈

_Ransom  
_> OUR FROG!!!IS GETTING!!!!!!! M A R R I E D 😭😭😭

_Lardo_  
> yeah, Jack, Bitty, PLEASE rant about how much you love each other  
> I am so happy for you. Congratulations

_Jack_  
> Haha, I don’t know if there’s anything to congratulate. We all knew it was coming.

_Bitty_  
>> No, Mister, I didn’t KNOW it was coming THIS WEEKEND.

_Jack_  
> Okay, then you’re really blind, because you literally took the ring box out of my toiletry bag this morning when I asked you for my razor…

_Bitty_  
>> I did??? God, I didn’t even notice

_Ransom  
_> please tell us more! How did I happen? I want to know everything

_Bitty  
_>> No offense, but it’s mega-late.  
>> But we’re back in Providence Sunday afternoon, do y’all want to come over for dinner Sunday night?

_Ransom_  
> Of course!

_Lardo_  
> Yeah, definitely.

_Shitty  
_> Enjoy your night my loves!!! We’ll see the details later. Kisses on the butt

_Jack_  
> Good night everyone  
> Bittle says good night too

**Zimmermif’**

[Saturday, 2:04 AM]

_Bitty  
_>> [Same selfie sent]

[Saturday, 7:32 AM]

_Alicia_  
> Félicitations !

_Bob_  
> Jack, Bitty, That’s such great news to wake up to. We are so happy for you. Your mom is crying. Call us when you have time. We love you both.

**Coach, Mama, Jack, Bitty**

[Saturday, 2:05 AM]

_Bitty  
_>> [Same selfie sent]

[Saturday, 8:10 AM]

_Mama_  
> Congratulation, Dicky. Your daddy and I are so happy for you. We send you a lot of love.

_Call connecting…_

“Allô?”

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Bitty asked, as he was comfortably sitting against Jack on the couch of the rental house. “I just put you on speaker… Sorry for Skype, but the Internet is just so bad here.”

“Yes, yes, we can hear you well! You are already up?”

“Well, Papa, it’s nine already, of course we’re up…” Jack replied.

“Wow, nine o’clock, you slept in so much you lazy feet…” Alicia laughed. “But who cares. Congratulations! I am _so happy _for you, you have no idea. I wanted to tell your grandma, and the milk guy, and everyone I saw this morning, really.”

“Haha – please don’t tell everyone, Maman, we’re keeping it under wraps for a little longer.”

“Please tell us more – who asked? How did it happen? Jack didn’t tell us at all that he planned to propose. I mean, not this weekend.”

“Well, you know,” Bitty said, and he was gushing but he couldn’t care less. “It was our last free weekend before a long time, because with all the holidays and games and roadies coming, work would be busy for the both of us in the next two months, so Jack booked this _charming_ cottage on the coast and we arrived there yesterday, around noon…”

Faintly, they could hear Bob’s ‘_Weekend en amoureux à la mer, un classique…’_ but Bitty continued his story.

“We visited the small town we were staying in during the day, and we planned a night hike-”

“A _hike_? Really?” Alicia asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know. I expected a nice restaurant, or even a homemade dinner, or _maybe _a walk along the beach, but a _hike_?”

“Well. We’re both athletes, we love hiking,” Bitty defended.

“Oh, non, no, I’m just surprised. But yes, it’s very fitting. Jack is always telling me about your hikes. It’s lovely, really. Something personal about you both.”

“Anyway. We leave at the end of the afternoon, because it’s a long one, and we ate on the way, and we missed the exact moment the sun set because we were lost in woods, but it’s almost the full moon and the biggest chunk of the trail was on the coast so the night was clear – and then, towards the end of the loop, we reach a small cliff over a bay, with a way to reach the beach, and it was so beautiful and peaceful let me tell you, and Jack stops right here, at the top of the cliff, and he takes my hands and he proposes to me.”

“That sounds so perfect – yes Jack, you made the right move with the hike, definitely.”

“We took a lot of photos there,” Jack said, “I’ll send them to you once we’re back home.”

“Too bad it was too cold to go swim!” Bitty deplored. “But really, it was perfect.”

“It sounds like it was!” Bob praised. “Bitty, Jack – we’re really, really happy and proud of you both. We love you so much.”

“We love you too,” Jack said.

“What do you plan to do today?” Alicia asked.

“Nothing. We’re going to enjoy the spa in the cottage.”

“Jack _did_ book us a horse ride on the beach tomorrow morning, though…” Bitty sighed. “We’re going to die.”

“Haha, probably,” Bob joked. “We’re going to leave you, okay? Enjoy your weekend together. We’re calling you this week.”

“Ok, ok, haha. Bye, papa, bye, maman.”

“Bye Jack, bye Bitty!”

When the call was disconnected, Jack sat up from his slouching position, and stretched a bit.

“So, Bits – there’s a jacuzzi with our name on it in the next room over, and some champagne in the fridge, what about we bake some cookies to eat there?”

“Mister Zimmermann, you know me too well.”


	6. Facetime - March 2018

“I miss you…”

“I miss you too.”

“I can’t wait to have you back home…”

“The day after tomorrow.”

Jack sighed. Bitty wasn’t used to be the one away for work, while Jack was staying home. But he had been invited by hosts of a big-name YouTube cooking channel to shoot a few videos, so of course he jumped at the chance. Now Jack was all alone in their big apartment with only their two pet rabbits to keep him company, and it was getting late in Providence but Bitty was on the West Coast, enjoying a free afternoon between two video shootings.

“I’m making dinner,” Jack said, getting up from the couch to walk to the kitchen, his phone still in hand.

“I’ll help.”

“You’re going to cook along?”

Bitty, on the video, laughed at that.

“I’m in a _café_, sweeatheart! I don’t have anything to cook. I can talk, though.”

“Please, humor me.”

Jack set up the phone against something (probably the bread box), so that Bitty could see him and he could see Bitty, and they cooked together. They talked and laughed and Bitty was talking Jack through the steps of the preparation, just as they did when they cooked together back home – and Bitty left the café, in the middle of the preparation, to stroll around the small city and show Jack the sights (it wasn’t a hockey city, so he never had been) while still helping him to make this homemade pasta-pesto meal. Bitty had to leave before the end of it, he still had a video to shoot tonight, and they hang up FaceTime after sharing ‘I love you’s.

After the video was shot, a recipe of a cold fruits entremets, Bitty checked his phone to see that a picture was waiting for him: Jack’s plate of pesto pasta, accompanied by a little sad emoji (with a nose).

“Can we order Italian?” Bitty asked the other two video makers.

“Sure,” one of them replied. “I’m too lazy to cook anything else after everything we made.”

“Gosh, the kitchen is full of baked goods but nothing savoury… That’s your fault, Bittle,” the other laughed.

The plate of pesto pasta Bitty ate was objectively really good, but was also sent with a single sad emoji (sans nose).

**Sweatpea, Butty**

>> [Picture of the box of take-out pesto-pasta Bitty is eating]  
>> :(  
>> Thinking about you, honey

> It’s always better when we cook it together

>> That’s because we make it with love and a pinch of mischief  
>> ❤️❤️

> No that’s because I switch the lemon juice for limoncello without you noticing but we’re out of limoncello :-/

>> Jacob Laurent Zimmermann are you fucking kidding me.


	7. Georgia - June 2018

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a thing i want to write a ficlet about since i learnt bitty comes from georgia

It’s only at the airport, when Jack was checking his phone to search the flight number on the departure screen, that he realised.

Bitty was looking for their passports in their huge backpacks (they really got into onebagging), and he didn’t notice right away his fiancé freezing.

“Mmh. Bits.”

“Yeah?”

“Who took the tickets?”

Bittle, who was crouching on the floor to go through his bag (he _knew_ he had his passport in the front pocket, he swore!) raised his head at that.

“I don’t think it was me. Why?”

“I don’t think it was me either,” Jack just replied, not replying at all to the question.

“Mmh, wasn’t that the flight agency employee?”

They had booked the trip (a short visit to Georgia, and then to Israel, right before the wedding to meet with the family members they hadn’t got to see yet) during the busiest moment of the season for Jack, and of the year for Bitty’s cooking school; so, they went through an agency to take care of the plane tickets for them before forgetting all about it, and, considering the face Jack was making, it was the last time they will do such a thing.

“Please, Jack, tell me the plane leaves today, and not next week, or worse, in fourteen hours. We could justify going back home if it’s next week, at least.”

“Bits, we’re going to Georgia.”

Bitty frowned.

“Yes?”

“The country. Not the State.”

Bitty, who was still crouched down, just. Sat on the floor. Because he didn’t know what else he could do.

“… Are you kidding.”

“No. Bits, look at that, we have tickets to Tsibilli- Tbilisi? In Georgia, _the_ _country._”

“Jack, I didn’t even _know_ there is a country called _Georgia_. Where the hell is it?”

“In the Caucasus?”

“The _what_?”

“The- Russia. In between Russia and the Middle East. It’s mountains.”

“Jack, we can’t go to _mountains_ in the _Middle East_, we have a _barbecue_ at _Moomaw’s_ tomorrow.”

“I know,” Jack sighed, and then he sat on the floor in the middle of the airport right next to Bittle, because he was like that. “Well, that does explain why the Boston-Georgia plane was so expensive and the Georgia-Ben Gurion, so cheap.”

Bitty put his arms around his backpack, for support.

“What do we do now?”

Jack looked at him, pensive.

They were both thinking about the same thing. Neither wanted to go to Georgia to visit Bitty’s family. A big part of them didn’t want anything to do with Bitty anyway since he came out, and bowed out of the barbecue, and the family that was still coming wasn’t much more accepting. Even Moomaw had been more an ass than an ally in the whole thing, and the barbecue wasn’t an “engagement party” like it had been for _every_ _one_ of Bitty’s cousins, but a “well, a barbecue party, you know, Dicky and _he_ will be here.”

Mama still talked about Dicky and _Jack_ _Zimmermann (you know, the very famous hockey player, son of Alicia Zimmermann)’s_ impeding “partnership” and “event”.

Bitty looked at Jack. Jack looked at Bitty.

“Do we need visas in Georgia?” Bitty sighed.

“I’m googling it,” Jack replied immediately, his phone in hand. “We’re one-bagging, so international flight or not, we don’t need to be here early to check anything…”

“Well, I guess I’m calling my mom to break the news to her. Not that we will be missed much from the barbecue party.”

This trip to Georgia was the best to this date. They were indeed not missed.


	8. Herzliya - June 2018

__

_Dear Lardo, Shitty, Holster and Ransom, _

_Y’all asked for a postcard but you live together. So instead of writing each of you a small one with banalities you’ll have a big letter and I’ll put ugly postcards in the envelop too. Jack wants to draw on the postcards so. I’m glad you all laughed about our misadventure landing us to Georgia, the country, but don’t worry we arrived in one piece to Israel. Jack’s grandparents live in a beautiful villa in Herzliya, that is a really pretty neighbourhood of Tel-Aviv. Apparently they used to live in a development town in the middle of nowhere before Alicia bought them this place…_

_Jack’s grandpa is a great man, and a retired baker, and he taught me a lot of things!! I’m not even sure of how to write any of them, but there’s so much oil and honey and spices and stuff I’ve never seen! Jack’s grandma on the other hand doesn’t seem to like me much lol. But I’m not sure? There’s a lot of communication issues. They have Arabic and Yiddish as first language but learnt Hebrew here (even Jack) and speak all French perfectly at home – and here I come, only speaking English, that only Jack understands. I guess I’ll have to take French classes once back home, really… _

_A lot of Jack’s extended family came to meet us, and we also went to visit a few. But now it’s done, I met everyone and I tried to charm them with my genuine features, so we can now enjoy our holidays! There’s a beach just by Jack’s grandparents’ house, but, and I wouldn’t have guessed I’ll ever say that, but it’s so hot that we spend most of our days inside and only go in the evening outside to visit Tel-Aviv. Before going, I heard about the city being a Gay Capital, and let me tell you, we’re not disappointed. We went to more queer places and events in a week than in two years. There are even gay beaches! _

_That being said, I still can’t wait to be back home. The wedding is getting closer and I’m so excited and I can’t wait to see all of you and that we have the bachelor party! Promise, I’ll bring back cards with the recipes of the delicious fat delicacies Jack’s grandpa makes so well._

_Lot of love, but not too much because that’s gay, _

_Bitty _

The postcards that were sent with the letter are indeed, horrid and crude in a hick way, and Jack has drawn on the back of one a house, the sun, and ugly little people that wouldn’t be much different from a drawing a 3 year-old would make, and on another, he drew rather okay NHL logos (he obviously spent way too much time training to make those).


	9. Italy - July 2018

Bitty loved surprises. All surprises, any kind, he loved them. Jack _hated_ them on the other hand, especially for trips, he needed to plan the whole thing from top to bottom.

So, they decided that Jack would plan the whole honeymoon, and Bitty would have no idea of where they're going until they arrived there.

“Wow. You’re not scared?” Anna, one of the other cooks at the cooking school, had asked when she first heard of the plan.

“Not really? I trust Jack. I’m excited and I can’t wait, to be honest.”

Actually, Bitty had been _a bit_ scared of the whole surprise-honeymoon thing.

He wasn’t scared that he’d end up in the middle of a trip he wouldn’t enjoy; on the contrary, he was scared that Jack only thought about _him_ and not _himself_ and that Bitty would have the time of his life – while Jack would be bored his eyes out.

Bitty dream honeymoon probably would include doing nothing but tan on white sand beaches in the Seychelles (and have sex). Tanning on white sand beaches in the Seychelles would be the definition of hell on Earth for Jack. Jack’s ideal vacations include… A _lot_ of museums. And Bitty loved Jack, really, but he had seen enough Civil War museums for a lifetime. So Bitty was scared that Jack would plan a trip to Honolulu just to please him – and he was also scared that Jack would feel really stressed and anxious about the whole “surprise” thing.

But Jack had seemed so certain when he proposed to plan alone the honeymoon – surely, it meant that even before suggesting it, he already had a full plan and probably even an hotel picked up. So, Bitty decided to trust him.

He wasn’t disappointed, when they reached their connecting flight in JFK and he saw the destination.

“Italy?”

“Yeah. Happy?”

Italy made so much sense. Italy had beaches, and castles and ruins, and cities to visit and to shop in, and vineyards to tour and hikes to do, and it had food, oh, so much food, sweet and savoury and everything in between and beyond that – there was the sun that Bitty needed, and the History that Jack loved, and it was just so perfect for them.

And happy, Bitty was. Jack didn’t tell him anything more about the trip, and Bitty let himself be swept by the flow. They landed in Northern Italy, rented a car, and roadtripped from B&B to B&B, then took the train to the South, to go in a guest house in a tiny village near the sea for almost a week were they could just enjoy not doing much, before they finished their three-weeks trip in Rome and really, how could Bitty ever enjoy again a N-th Civil War museum when he had seen Jack excitedly infodumping everything he knew about the Roman forum, in the middle of the ruins they were strolling in? 

Really, the honeymoon was way better to Bitty than a week in Honolulu would have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really love everything in italy except the peroni  
peroni is the italian kronembourg


	10. JM Marvel Hotel (Hanoi) - August 2018

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i absolutely wanted them to go to viet nam, but good luck to find a "J" there...

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 13 Aug.**  
**Hi everyone! I wasn’t on Twitter much lately, but my summer was BUSY let me tell you. Lot of work (I made what feels like 100 videos to have things to regularly post while I’m away, +summer classes I give at the cooking school), and, you know, I got married

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 13 Aug.**  
**We were barely back from our honeymoon in Italy that we leave again, with our friends!! Vietnam (3 days) and Japan (6 days)! To thank them for the incredible work they did as our groomsfolk (they did nothing, but that also means they didn’t mess anything)

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 13 Aug. **  
**@lu-divine3 yes, there’s no “R.” anymore, I changed my name. I took Jack’s and now have Bittle as my middle name. Everyone was using it as if it was a given name anyway. I still use Bittle online/in my pro life as it’s under this name I’m known

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 13 Aug.**  
**Anyway we’re waiting for the plane and expect some food tour videos! [Picture: Selfie of Bitty grinning at the camera, sitting in an airport lounge. Holster and Ransom are right next to him, throwing peace signs, Lardo is further, on her phone, next to her Shitty is reading a travel guide, and even farther, there’s Jack, looking like a dad in dad clothes dadding his way in life.]

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 14 Aug.**  
**Ok. So. Landed. I expected Georgia heat, not Satan’s butthole**  
**[Selfie of Bitty in front of an airport. You can see his big backpack and how much he’s SWEATING.]

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 14 Aug.**  
**Everything here is so pretty! Expect to find Jack’s (and Ransom’s) Insta overloaded with pictures!

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 14 Aug.  
[Pictures ; the first one is of Holster, Lardo and Bitty faceplanting on a huge, fancy bed, the second is a selfie of Bitty in the mirror of a fancy bathroom, the third is Jack laying on a posh couch, eyes closed and relaxed, and Shitty is randomly sitting on his stomach while he’s going through his phone, and the last one is a view from the rooftop]  
Isn’t this hotel GREAT? Thanks @aliciazimmermann for the rec!!

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 14 Aug.  
[Picture – selfie of Bitty, Lardo and Jack in bathrobes and with cumcumbers on their eyes. Shitty can partly be seen in the background and he _probably_ doesn’t wear a bathrobe.]  
Nothing like a spa to get rid of the tiredness of a long flight ❤️

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.**  
**Hi, I haven’t updated in 24 hours. Things happened. A thread.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Shitty and Jack left at 7am and spent the day in the American embassy/police because Shitty realised his wallet, you know, with his ID, his licence, his passport, his credit card, etc, has been lost/stolen. Last time he remembers seeing it was still in Boston’s airport, so it could be anywhere, really.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Also Lardo, Ransom and I lost Holster. His phone doesn’t work abroad but he decided to have a short walk around the block this morning while we were preparing for the day (he was up since 5am because jetlag). He left at 7:30. At 10 he still wasn’t here, so we began to worry.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Lardo stayed at the hotel, Rans and I ran around to look for him for an hour before we gave up, went back, left a note in his room (asking him to go to the reception to phone us if he was back) and we went to look for him with Lardo. Went to the police at one

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
They couldn’t really help, and after we managed to explain our issue, we went back to looking for him. By then, Shitty and Jack were out of the embassy, but they took the wrong bus and got lost also.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Oh, and Jack’s phone got out of batteries and Shitty has a flip phone with no apps, no GPS, no internet!! At least they were together, but Holster was still lost.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
(By then, I talked to Jack on Shitty’s phone to update them on the “Nolster” situation – and Jack just said “don’t worry, it’s okay, it’s not too bad that it was Holster” “because he’s tall and strong and intimidating?” “no because he’s the one I like the less”)

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Did I tell you we haven’t eaten since breakfast? We haven’t eaten since breakfast

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
By seven, Jack and Shitty call us to tell us they’re at the train station (not far from the hotel). Apparently, after getting lost in buses again, they tried to take taxis and all, but the 1st driver quickly realised they had no idea of where they were going and tried to scam them. Things went sour, because Shitty

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
There almost was a fight? Or there actually was a fight, im not sure, they won’t tell. Anyway, it took them FOUR HOURS between the moment they decided to take a taxi and the moment a taxi dropped them at the station.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Still no Holster. Shitty forgot the papers the embassy gave him in the taxi. Ransom begins to cry because he’s hungry and he’s missing his best friend.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
We’re looking around the block for a good hour, in small teams, with regular meetings at a checkup point.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
I’m so hungry too. So is Lardo. She proposes that if we find Holster now, we just eat him. I agree. Jack realises that we need to eat before we do something terrible and forces us to sit in the nearest place to eat something.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
It was a McDonald’s. I went halfway through the world for 3 days and I have to go to a fucking McDonald’s. Still ate. I was just so hungry. Also, the portions are tiny

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Anyway, we order the food (fuck I hate mcdonald’s) and we sit at a table and we organise a plan (Jack organises a plan, rans lards and I are just gulping the food and shitty is on the phone with the taxi service to try to find his papers. He’s on the phone since the taxi left)

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
We’re at the end of our “meal” (really. I’m vegetarian. I have the options of fries or fries.) I had read before going that fastfood didn’t take off in Vietnam, and seeing what we had to eat, no wonder why. Then.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
I swear to god.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 15 Aug.  
Someone sit next to us and said “wassup guys.”

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
Guess who.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
I’m bad for suspense but yeah it was Holster.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
This FUCKER just got lost in his thoughts while strolling around and after he decided to just. Continue walking around to explore all day. And he went to Mcdonald’s of his own free will for dinner and saw us there. 

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
“Why are you mad?” YES INDEED WHY WOULD I BE MAD

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
I would have killed him if it wasn’t for the laws of this land.

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
Anyway it’s mega late, I’m still hangry, we’re finally back at the hotel and even two hours in the spa didn’t make me feel any better, I hope the rest of the holiday go more smoothly, fuck

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
@frd_ulli Shitty MAYBE has his papers back. He needs to go to the taxi center tomorrow or something. They found some stuff but don’t know if it’s his. And I lowkey think I’m gonna follow your advice and get a kiddie leash for Holster

**Eric Bittle ****✓**** @omgcheckplease **· 16 Aug.  
And that’s how we spent half of our time in Hanoi, we’re leaving the morning after tomorrow. Or, I guess, tomorrow, because it’s past midnight already. I’ll come back, but boy, I’ll come back ALONE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter _should_ arrive later this week, as usual ; but I'm not certain, I'm leaving for London in two days... So it'll be a surprise whether or not I have the time to post it


	11. Kobe Beef - August 2018

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I didn't have to time to post last week in the end, eh
> 
> Bitty's Valentine collection has been unveiled, and my entry for dyinginjapanese is among them if you haven't got to read it yet - as I posted it early, it hasn't hit the front page of the Check Please archive, [so have a try here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22591888)

** Food tour Japan #2 – Kyoto, Osaka **

61 906 views•16 Sept. 2018

[Video; opens with Bitty talking to the camera, while walking in the streets of a Japanese city. You can see a little bit Jack next to him, and Holster on the other side.

“Hi everyone! Bitty here for another food vlog! I hope you enjoyed the first video – a vegetarian and a kosher food tour of Tokyo, link in the description. It’s not posted yet when we’re filming this part, so let’s said y’all loved it. I did post about it on Instagram thought, and I saw a few questions regarding it, I’ll answer here; so, no, it wasn’t that hard to find vegetarian options, vegan ones are a bit trickier I guess, and for kosher restaurants – honey, was that hard to find?”

The camera turns slightly so it focuses on Jack.

“No.”

“Jack, it’s not a post-game interview…”

“Well – we only went to two or three for the video, no? First day we were there, I just went to the Chabad house to ask them for addresses and all.”

“Really? When? We spent the whole day together, bro,” someone on his left said.

“You all slept until 11 am, I had time to kill…”

“What the hell is a Chabad house now,” someone (Shitty) asked.

“Guys, focus,” Bitty inveighed.

Cut. On a calm music, some cutaway shots of touristic spots of Kyoto, including one of Jack and Lardo bowing their heads to some deer who are bowing back – Lardo and Jack then both turn towards the camera, grinning at how cool it is, and also several shots of temples.

Cut. They’re now in a tiny restaurant – and by tiny, there’s 8 seats, and 6 of them are taken by the squad. The other two are a young Japanese couple. The seats are at a counter, where half of the top are hotplates where the two owners (an older couple) are working.

“Hi everyone, we’re in a restaurant serving Kobe beef. The owners have been nice enough to let me film the meal and how they cook it, and let me tell you – it smells so good.”

Bitty turns the camera to focus on the hotplates, where lobster and a mix of vegetables are being cooked by the two owners, who are laughing and talking in hesitant English with Holster and Ransom.

“I’ll give y’all the address and the price of the meal in the description – and let me tell you it’s such a waste to come here if you don’t eat meat but I couldn’t do a food tour without coming here – and our friends are _really happy_ we’re inviting them.”

Cut. Jack and Bitty have grilled vegetables in their plates, while Lardo, on the other side of Bitty, is moaning in delight while eating her lobster.

Cut. Bitty is now focusing on the steak being cooked on the hotplate, and he’s asking some questions in English to the Mister cook about what’s so special about the beef and how it’s cooked. You can faintly hear Ransom and Holster flirting with the elderly Mrs Cook.

Cut. Bitty has now a plate of rice and some delicious-looking vegetables, and Jack is being served a _huge_ piece of cut beef that manages to _sound_ tasty. Next to Jack, Ransom and Holster have also just been served. The three take their chopsticks and taste at the same time.

“Oh shit.”

“Oh sweet fuck.”

“_Marde._”

Behind the camera, Bitty is chuckling. Holster is visibly in the middle of having a revelation and Ransom stopped to chew – probably to ty to keep the taste in mouth?

“Is it _that _good?” Bitty asked.

“Bits. It’s more than that,” Holster replied. “Even more because we’re not the ones paying.”

“Mmh, can I taste?”

“You sure, bud?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. A piece. I mean. Shitty is crying.”

The camera turns to the other side of Bitty and indeed, Shitty is crying. Lardo is looking at him weirdly.

“If you’re sick it’s not my problem,” Jack shrugged, as he pushed his plate towards Bitty so he could take a bite – and he grabbed the camera also, to be able to film Bitty’s reaction.

Bitty was a bit hesitant before putting the meat in his mouth, but he finally gathered his courage and bit it.

He chewed, for a few seconds, before he said:

“Holy _shit_.”

“Is it good?”

“Jack, let’s just said that if all meat tasted like that, I wouldn’t have become a vegetarian.”

The old cook laughed at that, and so did Jack.

“Do you want any more?”

“No way. The taste is incredible, the texture is perfect, the smell is divine, but the aftertaste of _guilt_ is strong after a few seconds.”

“Good, because believe me, you’d have had to fight over my dead body to get another piece from my plate…”

Cut. Different shots of the squad eating, the rest of the beef, and then miso soup, and then dessert, with shots of the cooks working and talking with them in between.

Cut. They’re outside the restaurant, it’s dark out, and Bitty is talking straight to the camera.

“So, that was great. I definitely advice y’all to try Kobe beef out if you ever have the opportunity. Again, the links and address and prices of the restaurant are all in the description- Now for the next part of the video, we’re staying in a ryoukan tonight and we have a typical huge meal planned tomorrow…”

[…]


	12. 4L - February 2019

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "agnagna, it begins with a 4 not with a L" shhhhhhhhhhhh  
shhhhhhhhhhhhhh
> 
> This chapter and the next are the ones that gave me the idea of the whole fic. They're basically a two-shot in the middle of this one-shot collection. I hope you'll enjoy them

The injury didn’t happen on the ice. It was a traffic accident, like hundreds happen every day, and Jack was lucky to get away with a totalled car, a broken leg, and with Tater next to him who only had a sprain wrist and a “badbutt scar on face, like pirate”.

Except that, well. Jack had managed for a while to be happy no one died in the crash died or had long-lasting consequences, but quickly once he was back home from the hospital, he got bored. Especially when, after two weeks, Tater was cleared good to play and Jack was suddenly bored _and_ alone in his misery. He wouldn’t be back on the ice before March, the docs all said.

Bitty had work, Shitty had work, Lardo had work, Ransom had work, Holster had work, and Jack only had two pet rabbits to hang out with, but the rabbits didn’t even _care_ about him if it wasn’t dinner time.

So Jack watched YouTube, a lot, and spent time on the Internet, a lot, and researched cars, a lot, because he needed a new one anyway.

  


And that’s why, the next time he went to the rink during practice time to see the team, he stopped by George’s office with his laptop, a shitty PowerPoint with funky transitions between each slide, and a presentation he had learnt the day before in front of the mirror and then in front of Bitty.

  


George wasn’t sure – at all – about the whole thing.

  


“You can’t leave on _two other continents_ for three weeks in the middle of the season, Jack.”

“I know you’re out of commission, and it’s for charity, but this is a terrible idea.”

“What if you re-injure yourself? It’s the desert, Jack.”

“A car race? In old French cars? You want to die, right?”

  


Still. Jack had arguments. The 4L trophy had an age limit of 28 years old – so it was his last chance to participate. It was a car race, yes, and a car race in old French cars in the desert, sure, but it wasn’t the point at all. The point was charity and giving out school and sports supplies to kids needing them. And Jack really wanted to do it. For helping out of course, but also for the whole adventure of crossing France and Spain and Morocco with his friends. And it would be at the end of February – by then, the plaster on his leg would be gone, but he still wouldn’t be playing anyway.

  


“George. I need something to do or I’m going to go crazy, really. And Bittle can make videos out of it, and it’s important I’m not forgotten while I’m out, no?”

  


After a lot of discussions with PR, the Managers, the coaches, the owners, Jack was greenlighted for the event. Bitty, Shitty, Lardo, Ransom and Holster would also be part of the adventure, and all began the preparations.

Finding the cars was easy, shipping them to Boston in the Haus 2.0’s driveway was something else. They had to totally repair one of the three, another was in an okay state, the last one had made the race two years before and was in a pretty good state still ; the Falconers would totally fund Jack and Bitty’s car (they didn’t want their star player parading in any other brand) and a part of the two others, but Lardo, Shitty, Ransom and Holster still had to run after sponsors to fund the totality of their cars.

The whole process had been recorded by Bitty on YouTube and Instagram – from going to every little shop of Boston and Providence to look for people who’d sponsor them against a sticker on their beat-up car, to try to repair the cars according to the strict rules for doing so (thanks God that Dex was there to help them out with that – he was Bitty’s production manager/editor/handyman since he graduated, but even he had to admit he didn’t expect ‘fixing cars’ to be one of his tasks) and even to the shopping list of what they would need to bring with them.

The cars, all shiny and ready to race, were shipped back to Europe just in time to arrive for the event, and the six friends arrived in Bordeaux a few days before they had to be in Biarritz for the start of the race.

The Falconers had accompanied them to the airport in Boston, Alicia and Bob had flooded everyone’s phones with encouragements, Lardo’s parents and Shitty’s mom had organised a small party before the departure, Ransom’s parents had funded a part of their son’s car so there was a huge sticker of Ransom’s mom’s face on a door, Holster’s parents had learnt basic French so that they would try to follow the event in the French news. They were flooded with support, really, and it was really humbling in a way – all those people were believing in them, in their project, and they wanted to finish the race for them.

  


“How do you feel?” Shitty had asked Jack in the morning, when they were packing in the 4Ls the backpacks and the tents and the 10kg of non-perishable food and the bags full of school furniture they had to bring for the associations they were racing for.

“I’m feeling so great,” Jack had replied, and that was true – even if he hadn’t been on the ice for months, if he hadn’t played a game since October, he was feeling great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 4L Trophy is a real event that runs every year for [la Croix-Rouge](https://www.croix-rouge.fr/) and [Enfants du Désert](https://enfantsdudesert.org/%22Enfants). If you want to see more, there's youtube vids of media covering of the event, and great videos of Youtubers (Amixem, Cyril.MP4, Youcook...) who raced those last years.
> 
> Next chapter is the letter M, so you all know where it's gonna happen...


	13. Morocco - February 2019

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I obviously meant M as in Morocco. Not M as in Mature. Sorry I guess

How to win a car race in the desert that we technically lost – featuring Jack Zimmermann and our friends

281 975 views • 13th March 2019

[Video. It opens on a time lapse of the sun rising over the empty desert. There’s only a dry tree far away.

“A few months ago, my husband got a crazy idea.”

Drone shots of cars driving on the Spanish highway.

“He was injured and out of work for a few months, and the mere idea of twiddling his thumbs at home made him anxious.”

Shots of the squad in a Spanish supermarket, filling their cart with beer and food and pans and other utensils – and then, of them trying to fit what they bought into three cars filled to the brink with tents, sleeping bags, tools and bags.

“So, he learnt about this adventure, and decided he wanted to try.”

Shot of Lardo and Holster sleeping on the floor of the ferry. Ransom is next to them, on his phone.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, he told me. I wanted to. He said the same to our friends. They wanted to.”

Shot of them all taking their first steps on the Moroccan soil, after their ferry trip. They seem tired, but happy.

“The 4L Trophy is a car race where the race is the less important part.”

[…]

Cut. Dashcam of the inside of Bitty and Jack’s car – Jack is driving, and gripping the wheel.

Bitty grab the GoPro to turn it towards the road – a slightly more used, and very accidented, orange rocks path in the middle of an orange rocks desert. It’s clear that Jack isn’t comfortable driving on all those bumps. There’s a lot of dust, raised by all the cars that passed before.

“That’s not the same as driving your brand-new Tesla in Providence, uh?” Bitty says, and he has to almost yell to cover the noise of the car.

“Bits, at the second we stop, we’re switching and I’m not driving anymore until I’m back in my brand-new Tesla in Providence.”

“That’s what you call an adventure, honey?”

[…]

Cut. The three cars are stopped, everyone is out of them. They’re at the top of a small rocky mountain – surrounded by other, taller mounts. Bitty is filming the landscape – it’s breathtaking – and then his friends, taking a break and checking the maps. Two other cars pull over and the four racers in it come out to discuss a bit with the squad.

[…]

Cut. At the Boulajoul-Merzouga bivouac – it’s at a checkpoint, so all the participants and cars are here. It’s where the participants are giving to volunteers the school and sports supplies they had to bring – moment that Bitty is filming. He also films (probably from the top of Holster’s shoulders) the entirety of the cars and tents that are being set up around – it’s a _lot_. As it’s an important checkpoint, Bitty films the speech (in French) that the organisation is giving there about the race, the charities, and the donations that they have gathered yet, to thank all the participants. A special thanks is given to Jack, who had given ahead of the race a consequential check for the charities. Ransom, Holster, Lardo, Shitty and Bitty don’t understand one word of the speech, but are whistling when hearing Jack’s name (and Bitty focuses the camera on him hiding his face in his hands.)

Cut – it’s night. In between their cars, the squad has set up a folding table and is sharing the meal prepped by the organisation and their beers with headlamps to try to see something. You can’t hear what they say, but Bitty explains in a voice-over where they are and what is left to do. He also explains more the rules of the race – including that the purpose is to drive as little km as possible, and that they do one-day long stopovers leaded by the organisation until the last one – a 48 hours marathon to Marrakech in total autonomy (also the only night they’ll have to cook, Bitty can’t wait.)

Cut. It’s early morning. Shitty is inside the tent, sitting up and filming Bitty, Jack and Lardo who are all cuddling and still peacefully asleep… Until he shushes “go” and Ransom and Holster (who share a smaller tent) run inside to jump on their friends and scream “WAKE UP SLEEPY HEADS”

Jack, still half asleep, manages to throw Holster at the other side of the tent in one push.

[…]

Cut. Dashcam showing the inside of Shitty and Lardo’s car, they’re driving – until Lardo makes a sign so Shitty slows, and he’s reversing, until they stop – Cut, to Lardo out of the car talking straight to a cam she’s got in hand.

“Ransom and Holster’s motor is doing a weird noise so we had to stop. We’re trying to fix this, but…”

She turns the camera towards the guys. The three cars are stopped on the side of the road, and Holster and Ransom’s has its bonnet open and Bitty is trying to fix the motor, while Ransom holds his phone to show the inside of the hood – they’re FaceTiming Dex, who is guiding Bitty with the repairs.

It must have been a while, because Holster has given up on his pants and is only wearing boxers, Ransom wrapped his T-Shirt around his head as a hat, Shitty is hiding inside a car away from the sun, and Bitty himself is taking off his damp T-Shirt to use it as a towel for his forehead instead. At this moment, Jack, three feet away, misses his mouth when trying to drink.

[…]

Cut. They’ve stopped in a village because they’re _totally lost_, and Jack is trying to explain the problem to locals.

Bitty is filming from away. The villagers’ French isn’t great, so Jack has opted on phoning his grandpa and use him as a French-Arab translator. Saba Iakob is from Algeria originally and doesn’t know shit about the geography of Morocco, so the whole ordeal is complicated. Finally, they still seem to manage to understand each other, because Jack and the villagers part ways with “Shukran” and “Inshallah”’s.

“We’re absolutely in the wrong direction we need to turn around,” Jack says as he joins the others.

“Great,” Holster sighed. “We only lost one hour.”

[…]

Cut. Bitty is filming from a bit away. Their three cars and four others are stopped somewhere where the road has deep wheel marks.

“It’s marathon day, so we wanted to try another path than the one everyone was taking – and we’re stuck somewhere where cars are getting stuck in the sand. I hope we can get out.”

The group seems to agree on what to do, and Lardo hops in hers and Shitty’s car – all the guys get behind it, and she speeds up while they’re pushing. After a minute, they manage to get the car unstuck, and Lardo advances some more before getting out and hoping in Ransom and Holster’s to do the same.

“It’s working! Bits, come help!”

Some shots of Bitty pushing the cars with everyone – the next two pass with no problem with a push, but for the last ones, they have to use a cord and pull them out of the holes with the first cars. Finally, all seven manage pass the tricky spot, and they go back to driving.

[…]

  
Cut. The night is setting. There are only their three cars – you can see some other cars and fires, but there’s in a place so empty that they’re kilometres away probably.

Ransom and Holster had gathered some wood on a precedent stop – they are now lighting a fire. Bitty explains in a voice over that it’s the autonomous bivouac, and they’ll have to cook dinner.

Cut. The fire is big now, and they have set the pan above it to cook some rice. Jack and Ransom are at the table, cutting vegetables that Shitty is peeling – they’re all lit by headlamps. Lardo is sitting against her car, and she’s sketching something. Holster is opening the beers.

Cut. Some other cars have stopped – including two of the ones they helped get unstuck earlier today. They have food offerings too to share.

Cut. They’re all enjoying the meal, then they’re around the fire, eating marshmallows, and Jack and Ransom are playing the ukulele, and there’s also some shots of the night and the desert around.

The voice-over says:

“I didn’t know what I expected. Not that, I guess. But this night was, by far, my favourite moment of the adventure. Not that I can think of any part I didn’t like. It’s the last night. Tomorrow, we’re reaching Marrakech. We’re going to stay a few days there before going back home, but it’s the end of an adventure, that I had the incredible chance to live with my friends and my husband…”

[…]

End of the video – the special thanks and music credits are rolling.]

Thanks again for the 4L Trophy great organisation, to Jack for the idea, to our friends for following us, to every participant for making this event what it is. 

If you want to give to Enfants du Desert or the Red Cross, here are links to do so: [bit.ly/jzioIYYUhkk](https://enfantsdudesert.org/formulaire-don/) & [bit.ly/ppOOz559q](https://soutenir.croix-rouge.fr/)

This is the end of the cycle of videos about the 4L Trophy. It’s one hour long but I wanted to show a broad aspect of it; there’s at the beginning some excerpts you’ve seen on Insta about the fixing of the cars, moments on the road, moments down, a brief tour of Marrakech in the end – feel free to skip the parts that don’t interest you.

Editors: William Poindexter & Eric Bittle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be a transition before the second part of the story :) stay tuned !


	14. New York City - January 2020

Jack and Bitty hopped in a taxi right after the game, still giddy about the hat trick and the last-second goal from Jack that earned the Falconers their victory.

“Nice game,” the taxi driver had told Jack when he entered the car, “I was listening on the radio.”

“Thanks,” Jack replied, grinning. “Just tried to do my job better than the Islanders.”

“I’m a Rangers fan, so you did good, really,” the driver laughed. “Now, where do I bring you?”

“Borough Park – wait, I have the address in my phone…”

The trip would last _at_ _least_ 20 minutes if there was no traffic, even if the destination seemed so close on a map – really, Bitty wasn’t used to such big cities. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be. At least, the driver seemed nice enough.

“So, you’re not celebrating your hat trick with your team?” he had asked Jack.

“No – I’m not a big fan of bars. And I promised my aunt that we’ll have a late dinner at her home, so…”

“Ah, you’ve got family here?”

“Yeah, yeah. My dad and my mom both have siblings and cousins and aunts and all here. They also have an apartment in Borough Park…”

“That’s where we’re staying,” Bitty explained. “So small, and yet, so expensive…”

“Haha, that’s New York for you! So, you’re not staying with the Falconers?”

“Nah, we arrived early yesterday. Wanted some time to visit Jack’s family, and my high school hockey teammate who is in NYU now. We didn’t really have time to do anything, so I guess we’ll have to come back later…”

The driver took a right, to avoid what seemed to be the beginning of a jam ahead.

“It’s your first time here?”

“Yes, sir. New York seems great, but there is _way too many _things.”

“You don’t say! What did you manage to do?”

“Went to Broadway with my two of my cousins yesterday,” Jack said.

“To watch Hamilton. Apparently his cousins were hyperventilating when Jack told them which tickets he bought for the four of us, so I don’t even want to know how much he splurged on those…”

“Way too much when one of us doesn’t even like musicals,” Jack said, frowning.

“Listen, Jack, I didn’t know you’d surprise us with tickets that expensive! I’m sorry I fell asleep!”

“How in six years and a half we know each other the fact that you hate musicals never came up?”

“_How is the fact that YOU are a musical nerd who can rival with Holster never came up_?”

“My mom was in musicals! Two of my cousins are actors in Broadway musicals right now! I did musical nights with Holster for years!”

“How would I know, _I’ve never been to a musical night because I hate musicals-”_

The driver laughed at that – it was playful banter, after all, that continued until they arrived right in front of the building Jack’s Mom’s cousin was living. She was waiting in front of it and hugged Jack when she saw him, while Bitty paid the driver.

“Enjoy New York City. Hopefully, without musicals.”

“Ah, don’t worry – we still have tomorrow morning to see some stuff.”

“You’ll just have to come back to see the rest, then.”

“Haha, sure,” Bitty chuckled. “I don’t know when, though. We’re going to be really busy from this summer on…”


	15. Ontario (Bruce Peninsula National Park) – October 2020

[**r/onebag**](https://www.reddit.com/r/onebag/) • Posted by u/jlbz_01 3 hours ago

**First time backpacking with a baby – on a hiking trip**  
** Seeking Recommendation/Help  **

Hi friends,

I’ll be in Ontario in two cities for work for a few days – between them, I’ll have a day off, so my husband and I decided he’ll come with our baby (4 months) and we’ll go on a short hike. First trip for baby.

We want to try one-bagging, more to know if it’s possible than because of need (flights are with my company, no bags limitations & no check-in ; we’ll rent a car once here to go to the hiking site/to the other city)

Here is what we’ve packed for now [imgur link – the two backpacks, their contents, and the maxi cosi are lined up on a bed]

As you can see, most of the room is taken by baby stuff. It’s heavy and all won’t fit. If you have any suggestions, I’m happy to hear them, and I have some questions:

• We’re exclusively using cloth diapers at home. Is that a good idea while travelling? We’re staying in two different hotels, both with laundry service but I doubt giving shitty diapers to the staff, even with a big tip will make us a hit eh. If disposable diapers are a better option – do you have any biodegradable brands to rec? What about disposable liners in cloth diapers ? Is it better to pack everything or to buy once we’re here?  
• Formula is big. Is there a way to not make it big  
• Baby carrier or scarf for baby-wear?? We use both at home (carrier, more husband than I, he’s more often alone with baby so it’s easier to strap baby, + I more often use scarf because we’re not the same size at all so I don’t like having to adjust the straps) but we would like advice from people who hiked with their baby already

I also would like to know if you have any links for neon yellow baby shoes ? My husband will hate them but I need my baby to be as fashionable as I am

simpletravellr_  
[deleted]

> **canak-canuk**  
Your comment has been removed. We all guessed who OP is. We don’t mention who OP is. OP has been here for years. Let OP pack lightly in peace like everyone here. -Mod Canak
>
>> simpletravellr_  
Yeah you’re right. Sorry OP.

[Instagram video: in a plane, filmed from a few rows before across the aisle; Bitty is shushing at his upset baby (whose face you can’t see) and cradling her. Jack, next to them, is also trying to calm her down – she seems to once she manages to grab his finger and bit it]

**tater-mashkov **Zimboni brang his greatest fan with him for the games!!! Baby Helena is our good luck charm

**shittyknight **baby Stanley!!!! Eating her papa she has good taste

**omgcheckplease** stop trying to make Stanley happening it’s not happening

* * *

Jack played the Senators on Monday, and the Leafs on Thursday – instead of going back home in the meantime, Bitty and Helena had flown with him to spend some time in Canada. And of course, as the weather wasn’t too harsh yet, it was a great occasion to hike. They had strapped Helena in the rental car, took way too many things in their bags for a small 6km hike, and Bitty drove them to one of the National Parks that Holster and Ransom had gushed about.

It was the first time they’ll hike with Helena – she had recently turned 4 months old, and Bitty and Jack didn’t really have the time to go anywhere this summer between two doctors appointments.

So, to hike in Canada they’ll go.

The hike was a climb at the top of one of the cliffs – they were promised a marvellous view on the lake, some forest, and a lot of walking on rocks.

They weren’t disappointed. Helena stayed awake the whole time, and seemed to be really interested in what she was seeing and what the dad who wasn’t carrying her was bringing to her for her to see – leaves, rocks, a mushroom (Bitty chastised Jack for this one) and some flowers. They only had to stop once during the climb to feed her (Bitty almost dropped the Thermos of hot water while making her bottle, it definitely wasn’t practical) and they switched then, Jack now carrying her and Bitty, the bag. All in all, she seemed to like nature. More than she had liked planes and the hotel yesterday.

Bitty was a bit behind when they reached the top of the cliff. He was a bit out of breath; really, they brought way too many things in the bag. It was too heavy. He sat on a boulder to catch his breath.

Bitty looked at his husband and their daughter. Jack was standing at the top of the cliff, Helena strapped on his chest, and he was playing with her feet as he was looking at the turquoise blue lake below.

It was breathtaking.

“C’est beau…” Jack said to Helena, who was laughing at her papa’s hands on her feet. “Mais tu t’en fous, hein? Parce que t’es un bébé. Tout ce que tu veux, c’est manger, jouer, dormir et faire caca, et t’es bien assez heureuse comme ça. T’as pas besoin de devoir marcher des kilometres et gravir des montagnes pour avoir une fausse impression de complétude qui ne remplit que provisoirement un vide artificiel créé par la société, en regardant un petit reste de nature et de beau. On devrait prendre exemple sur toi, asticot. Toi tu trouves tout beau. Parce que t’es qu’un gros bébé.”

Jack turned around, to see Bitty sitting a few metres away. He grinned at him.

“Bits! Come here!”

“I’m here, I’m here,” Bitty grinned back, sitting up.


	16. Paris - June 2021

Alicia owned an apartment in Paris. Jack had told Bitty about it, before – when they had begun to talk about the honeymoon, Bitty had first proposed they’d go to Paris, but Jack shot this idea down quickly because well, he _knew_ Paris, he had family in Paris’ suburbs, and “it was nothing to write home about”.

Bitty wasn’t really sure about this, because _Paris, _but hey.

Anyway. Alicia’s apartment didn’t lie unoccupied most of the time. She rented it out for movie shootings because apparently, the French _loved_ to shoot their movies in posh Parisian apartments. When it was free for a while this summer, she had proposed to Bitty and Jack a family holiday for a week or two. They said they’ll think about it, and booked a last-minute flight when the Falconers lost the Conference Finals.

The plane trip was terrible with Helena – she was crying during the whole taking off and landing, and while flying she didn’t sleep at all and was fussy all over, but at least she wasn’t loudly crying anymore. The taxi trip was just as bad, and when Bitty and Jack arrived in front of Alicia’s apartment, both only dreamt about sleeping until the following morning. And it was only eleven am.

Alicia and Bob had already been here for a few days, and when they opened the door, Jack immediately gave them the baby (who was hiccupping because she had nothing to cry anymore) so that he could find the nearest bed to fall onto.

Visiting a new city with a baby barely one year old strapped on your chest was an ordeal. Bitty and Jack only realised now. When she was smaller, it was easy. She was just a baby doing baby things, like watching what was going on and burping bubbles of saliva. But now? She was learning how to walk. And she wanted to try to walk, all the time. She didn’t want to be carried, like a mere _baby_, she wanted to do her own stuff and live her own life and honestly, Bitty was half certain that if he let her lose in the street she’d run into the nearest bank to open an account in her name.

But that much investment from her meant that she was easily tired, and all the food she got to try wasn’t to her taste, and thus, she was whining all the time. It was to the point that they were worrying when she was silent.

But really, she only had so much patience and waiting in line for hours to visit all of Paris’ tourist spots and having to stay put in fancy restaurants wouldn’t do it for her. Jack and Bitty began to regret the trip on the second day here.

On the third day, after a terrible morning where they were stuck in a metro carriage for thirty minutes and a okay afternoon in the botanical gardens, Jack and Bitty came back from the laundry room of the apartment’s building with their arms full of baskets of clean clothes and diapers, where they were welcomed by an empty apartment.

“I think your parents disappeared with our daughter, Jack.”

“I’m too tired to care,” Jack replied, making his way to the bathroom to hang the laundry.

Barely five minutes after, Bitty’s phone pinged. A new message.

**Zimmermif’**

_Bob_  
> [Picture: Selfie of Bob, Alicia and Helena in the street.]  
> We’re taking the baby for the night! Enjoy the apartment for yourself!

_Bitty_  
>> Bob, she’s got a bedtime.  
>> Please get her back before we file for kidnapping

_Bob_  
> Yeah we realised that 5 minutes into the plan when we were already out so we’re just walking to the hotel at the other side of the street and we’re booking a room for you for the night. We’re back in 5 with the room card.  
> Listen, I know you two hate when we do stuff like that, but if you really don’t want to leave her with us Atsi&I can go to the hotel and you stay /w her in the apartment. We just want you to have a night for yourselves, you’re exausthed. Atsi&I can take care of her for one night and you just.enjoy and relax, okay? There’s room service and a spa and a great view. And we get to have a night babysitting our grandddaughter

_Bitty_  
>> Let me talk to Jack about it.

_Bob_  
> Ok

_Jack  
_> Okay, Bitty and I are leaving you Helena for the night. But please, next time, ask us before doing something like that.

Ten minutes later, Alicia and Bob were back with Helena. They gave Bitty and Jack the hotel room card, made them pack their bags, and all but kicked them out of the apartment (they still spent ten minutes at the front door, carrying Helena and telling her to be nice and kissing her before they left).

The hotel room was nice, so there was that at least.

“Is this a date?” Jack asked, while he and Bitty shared the cramped bathtub of the room.

They had a plate of room service food propped on a stool right next to it, with Jack’s phone that was streaming an episode of the first show they found on Netflix, while Bitty’s phone was ready to be answered to at the first text if Alicia and Bob had any problem – it was, after all, the first night Bitty and Jack would both spend apart from Helena.

“I have no idea what dates are anymore,” Bitty replied. “But if they’re all like that, we maybe should try to do them more often.”

“Mmh,” Jack said, moving to kiss Bitty’s shoulder. “You’re a ball of nerves. Want a massage?”

“Maybe on the bed, after the bath. There’s no room here,” Bitty said. And then, he added: “You can keep kissing me, though, Mister.”

“Well if you ask me like that…”

**IDIOT DREAM TEAM**

_Ransom_  
> So, loverboys, how is Paris?

_Bitty_  
>> Great  
>> Alicia and Bob babysat the other night and kicked us to an hotel  
>> And look at what happened this morning!!!  
>> [Video: Bitty and Jack are sitting on the floor, a few metres apart. Alicia is on the couch not too far, so Bob is probably recording. They’re all focused on Helena, who is tentatively, taking her first steps between her parents’ arms all alone, without any help. She’s laughing at everyone encouraging her.]  
>> She’s officially walking now! No need to hold our hands anymore  
>> 😢 I’m mostly proud but a bit sad

_Lardo_  
> Awww  
> My goddaughter is so great!!! You’re all jealous I get to godmother such a perfect unit!!!

_Holster_  
> You go kiddo!!! Uncle Ransom & I are going to teach you how to fight when you come back

_Bitty_  
>> ?? No?

_Lardo_  
> Shitty is crying

_Bitty_  
>> Paris is good but can’t wait to be back home  
>> We should be there on Saturday, the house is open to y’all on Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, parisians do love shooting movies in posh apartments. It's cheap and you just have to adapt a play and give the role to famous actors needing to pay their taxes.


	17. Québec - March 2022

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't post on Monday, I wasn't here! But here, have your regular Friday chapter

There was something about Montreal.

Maybe it was the people.

They all seemed to live on another plan of existence, one where things are both easier and nonsensical, but _they_ still understood what was happening – or at least, acted as if they did.

During the five days they were here, they crossed the path of several celebrities – and no one batted an eye at them. Hell, _they_ were visiting with _Alicia_ and _Bob_, and people didn’t bat an eye at them either.

Maybe it was the language.

Bitty still was terrible at French, but at least now he was learning at the same time as Helena.

He had been able to order a smoothie (and his daughter, a bagel! All by herself! Too bad they were in a smoothie shop!) without any issues while Jack wasn’t here, even if he spent his whole time in the queue thinking about how to build his sentence correctly and it definitely didn’t sound natural.

He wasn’t here, but he wanted to try. French and English mixed freely here. Jack was talking more, Helena was excited to be around people speaking like her Papa. Bitty wanted to try, really.

Maybe it was the city.

They had visited the still-empty place that would maybe become the second gallery Lardo’s boss was thinking about opening, and Lardo liked the space there was here - way bigger than the premises her boss had asked her to scout in New York. She liked the neighbourhood better also, and she said she could feel they wouldn’t make much less money than in New York if they decided to open the second gallery here.

The houses in Outremont, where Alicia and Bob lived, were really beautiful and Bitty could imagine how to arrange a kitchen in one of those beauties. Not too extravagant, far from a mansion, a nice yard and an old character. He could imagine living here, with two of their best friends right next door and his in-laws down the street.

But the season wasn't over and Lardo hadn't signed anything yet. There was still a lot to talk about, to ponder, to wonder. 

Even if Jack had always dreamt of finishing his career in Montreal, Bitty hadn’t been sure before their visit. But now he knew. He wanted to spend the next part of his life here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and with that, I've filled a whole colon of the Zimbits Bingo


	18. Rimouski - July 2022

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I feel a bit inadequate writing about travels in those times but hey
> 
> Mentions; I mention things regarding Georgia, Kent, etc that I explore more in my other fics if you want to read more, but basically; Georgia played in a women's team and married her co-captain, and a few months after that her spouse came out as a transman. They both retired a season after that; her husband is the Falc's assistant coach.

[Instagram video: Jack and Bitty’s daughter (whose face is censored with a peach emoji) is taking her first steps on the ice. Jack is the one helping her standing at first and Bitty is crouching on the ice to get her in his arms after a few steps. There’s a lot of people around her, including Ransom and Alicia who are watching and encouraging her.]

**@omgcheckplease **A small step for Helena, a hug step for the Zimmermann Hockey Dynasty

Please visit Rimouski’s rink today for the fundraiser for the peewee teams!]

Coach Denis had retired from coaching Rimouski’s Juniors team a few years ago, but his retirement only meant that he switched to volunteer coaching the peewee kids. A small team, with no funds, and a sub-par rink, so he had decided to organise a big event to raise some money and had invited his old players to try to bring in people.

Jack had said yes, immediately, and that’s how he, Bitty and Helena ended up in Rimouski’s rink for the day. Bob and Alicia had been happy to come too, and Lardo and Shitty, of course (even if Lardo had sit down on the first chair she found once she arrived and hadn’t moved from here, probably sleeping under her sunglasses. Pregnancy wasn’t kind to her.) They were immediately arranged jumped on by Jack's old teammates - especially Kent, who was already in skates, and Gothy (now captain of the Schooners), their best friend from the Q.

The afternoon had been eventful, between teaching newcomers how to stand on skates, a couple of shinnies, toasts around the buffet – that was a lot of talking and interacting with people, so after a while, Jack felt the need to retreat. Helena was under the good care of Alicia, so he wasn’t needed immediately.

Kent was at the other side of the rink, far from everyone, leaning against the boards and watching people on the ice.

That’s where Jack went. Kent didn’t even turn to look at him.

“So, how is Montreal treating you?” he just asked.

“Good. Good. And you, Vegas?”

Kent sighed at that, his eyes still on the rink. Bob and Bitty were teaching a bunch of passionate kids about some kind of play.

“Well. You just signed with your legacy team, your hometown. I really think about doing the same.”

“You would? Leave the Aces?”

“I’ve been one of those kids,” Kent said, his eyes on the group. “A poor kid that got to try hockey thanks to a program the Rangers did. I’ve had the chance to listen to hockey legends teaching me how to hold my stick. No, scratch that, I _wish_ I were one of those kids – they also get to be taught by an A+ queer player, who is currently, I’ve heard today between two slices of pies, trying to set up a _hetero-friendly_ beer league team in Montreal. Anyway, my point is – I’m thirty-two. I enter the last part of my career. And I’m still in the closet, in a team that I built with my own two hands but that I loathe more and more every day. And. I want it. I want to go back to New York. I dream of playing with the Rangers, who are the ones that gave me a chance to play in the first place. And to be out, and to be able to come to events like this one with my boyfriend. So yeah. Your signing made me think. How did you know back then?”

“How did I know what?”

“That it was better to not sign directly in Montreal, when you entered the NHL, even if they were your dream team. It wasn’t a draft, you had the choice.”

“I didn’t sign with them at first, because I _couldn’t_ sign in a team my father was in legend in just like that, without proving myself first. I needed what the Falconers could bring me. It wasn’t the right time. That, and, let’s be real, one of the assistant managers back then hadn’t only good things to say regarding queer people, and on the other hand you had _the Martins_ with the Falcs, so.”

“Yeah; I’d have made the same choice, maybe. And, how did you know? That it was time to go back home?”

“My contract was up with Providence, and St-Martin and Robinson are retiring, Coach Martin is going with the Islanders because he’s got more opportunities to grow here, and the AGM, Georgia Martin, well of course she’s leaving with him, she got herself a spot with the Rangers I just heard this morning. Everyone is leaving or his traded, so I guess it’s the right moment for me to leave, you know? Plus,” he smiled, “baby number 2 will be here in a month, and Helena is soon starting kindergarten, one of our best friends had a job opportunity and had to choose between Montreal and New York, and she chose here, so, all of that together, it was the best moment to move. So, Kent, you’ll know. When it’s time for _you_ to change. And when you know, just go for it.”

“Shit, Baby number 2. Fuck. God, I’m so happy we broke up. Seriously, marriage, kids? That makes me gag.”

“Oh really? Because if I remember correctly, you always brag on the group chat about your lack of gag reflex…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed and stay the fuck home  
i'll push you to travel once again AFTER this bullshit
> 
> I invite you to read [You Want In Or Out?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16639730) to read more about Gothy, just like that, absolutely not because of next chapter's theme


	19. Seattle - October 2022

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is late but understand me, I couldn't write much because of the lockdown and then I finished my Big Bang fic and that was a whole ordeal. <strike> and animal crossing</strike>
> 
> But Check Please is ending tomorrow and I'm not ready

“Gothy t’as de la chance que j’t’aime crisse-”

“Jack, my man, my brother. Ferme-la et mets-tu correctement c’t’araignée sur ton _suit_, ‘kay?”

Hockey players didn’t usually marry during the season, for obvious reasons. But Gothy? Gothy was different. He was Jack’s classmate since childhood, his friend, his teammate in the Q, and now another NHL player (recently elected captain for the Schooners), and Gothy had a really unique way of assessing life.

His unique way could be summed up in “Edgar Allan Poe, but if he had spent more time at the gym than reading”.

Bitty hadn’t been sure about leaving the kids at his in-laws’ for two days between two of Jack’s games to fly to _Seattle_, to assist to _a gothic wedding_, in a _cemetery_, _on Halloween night_, where Jack was a _groomsman_, but hey. Gothy is one of the few out NHL players (very small circle that Kent recently joined in the whirlwind that had been his trade -that he basically forced- one week into the season) so Bitty felt like he should be here to support him.

“Can you believe that Bittle?” Gothy asked, as he was fixing correctly the spider brooch on Jack’s chest pocket. “I asked this guy to be my groomsman, even if he didn’t_ do the same_ for your wedding. I’m such a good person.”

“Not my fault I’ve got more friends that you,” Jack mumbled. “Be happy you made it to the guest list.”

“You’ll be the best man at _my _wedding”, Kent, who was trying to fix the spider on his own suit, said.

“You’re never getting married. You keep repeating this to everyone,” Bitty replied, unimpressed.

“Yep,” Kent agreed. “Best way to keep Gothy away.”

“You’re so fucking unnecessarily mean, you piece of shit. Sale crevure.”

“Dudes,” Rescardo (Gothy’s best man and teammate) groaned. “Focus. The ceremony starts in not even ten minutes.”

The ceremony was unforgettable, that was for sure. It was dark already, the entire place only lit by candles. The seats for the guests, where Bitty sat next to Kent’s boyfriend, were right next to tombstones; that was a bit macabre, to say the least. The officiant was dressed halfway between a goth and an undertaker, but it clearly wasn’t her first rodeo; and the speech she was giving was _nothing_ classical either. And the grooms…

Well, they were elegant. Wearing neatly made Victorian clothes, walking between graves (because boy, they were in a _cemetery, _who gets _married in a cemetery_, can’t they book the local botanical garden like everyone), Gothy was beaming, his groom was smiling (which, from what Bitty understood from the guy, was a miracle).

Jack was standing next to Kent on Gothy’s side. Okay, Bitty has to admit, he really was dapper in this suit. There was something about this whole aesthetic that suited him well, really… It didn’t stop Bitty to frown at him when he saw Jack starting to bite his nails. (Really, it wasn’t a surprise, nail polish and Jack did not see eye to eye.)

That was a nice ceremony. Even if Bitty wasn’t sure about the pyrotechnics during the vows. Or the union ceremony they did, not with sand but with paint. To put their fingerprints. On a skull. To make a vanitas. (Please, be it a fake skull…)

Bitty was joined by Jack and Kent after the ceremony and a round of photos, while he was drinking some wine with Kent’s boyfriend and other guests in the outskirts of the cemetery, where the reception was about to happen.

“Hey, you,” Jack told him, sneaking his arm around his waist and kissing him on the cheek.

“Hey _you_! How’s Gothy?”

“Over the moon, of course. Can I have my phone?”

“Yep, here,” Bitty said, taking Jack’s phone out of his inside pocket. “Your mom just texted, apparently Louis has been hellish and they can’t get him to sleep.”

“Yep. Sucks to be them,” Jack said, going through the group chat to look at the picture of their daughter holding her almost three-month old brother his dad sent.

“Jack.”

“Sorry, but they keep pestering us to have the kids sleep over and they refused to listen when we told them that Louis would be awful, so let me enjoy this moment. I’m going to text them ‘I told you so’ and nothing you say can stop me.”

Kent’s boyfriend laughed at that.

“Two kids. You’re braver than any U.S. Marine.”

“Ah, they’re not so bad with us!” Jack defended. “But Louis is so small and it’s out first night away from him, so… And I mean, he can barely sleep with us too, I guess…”

“I both can’t wait to see them again and can’t wait to sleep in a hotel room, alone and with no risk to be woken up with cries,” Bitty admitted.

“Ah yeah, I can under- Wait.” Kent started. “Is Gothy walking around with a _crow_ on his shoulder?”

And yep, Gothy was going through the crowd of guests, his new husband at his arm and a crow on his shoulder.

“I think we did our NHL wedding wrong,” Bitty shushed to Jack.

“Fuck, yes, the sky was the limit and we were so basic.”

Honestly, even if Bitty didn’t really understand, he was still so happy for them. But he still couldn’t wait the end of this wedding and to leave Seattle and never come back here for the foreseeable future.


	20. Thanksgiving - November 2022

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, well, its been a while
> 
> This chapter actually includes spoilers from my fic [According to plan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23583832/chapters/56586334), so- you should give it a read before reading this.
> 
> Next chapters will be quicker to arrive! 
> 
> TW; see end notes

Bitty and Jack arrived at Cousin Eric’s house early in the morning of American Thanksgiving. Jack had had a home game the night before, and they took a red-eye flight right after to be on time in the suburbs of Atlanta for dinner. The whole plan was an adventure, to say the least, but Bitty was glad they made the effort when they saw Cousin Eric and his wife, Leah, grin at them while they were getting out the rental car.

After hugs and greetings, Cousin Eric brought them to the guest room, where they had already set up a folding crib, so they could put down their backpacks. They immediately took Louis out of the baby carrier to put him in a fabric sling around Jack’s chest, before joining their hosts in the kitchen.

“Isn’t he so cute?” Leah gushed at the baby when the little family arrived. “You also are,” she said to their daughter, who was in Bity’s arms and who was yawning.

“Take a picture, it won’t last,” Bitty said. “She slept all night, and in the car, the airport, in the plane, and in the rental car again. Once she’s more woken up, she’s going to raise hell.”

“Helena’s two, now, right?” Leah asked, giving Jack a mug of coffee.

“Yes, since June. But thanks to her Uncle she only answers to ‘Stanley’ now, so don’t even bother call her Helena. And Louis here is three months and a half,” Jack smiled.

“Three and a half?” Cousin Eric asked. “He’s _huge_.”

“That’s the genes I got from my dad. Everyone makes _huge_ babies in my family. The surrogate didn’t appreciate much, I think.”

The light breakfast was quickly inhaled by everyone, joined not to long into it by Eric and Leah’s kids (Mary, 8, Eric (yes it’s a family name.), 6, and Lily, 3 – and Leah was expecting #4 sometime in March) who weren’t talking much around adults they didn’t know, before it was time to start to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

Bitty had forwarded a few days before the list of what he needed to bake dessert (he didn’t want to risk having to go through customs with pastries, and wanted even less to serve people something that had to cross a border in a baggage hold), but when he asked Eric how much it had costed, Eric had brushed it off.

“Eric, I’m already squatting your kitchen and your guestroom. I asked you to get some expensive ingredients, here. You can’t not give me the note.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Eric.”

“The dog ate the receipt. I couldn’t give it to you if I wanted to.”

“Eric. You don’t have a dog.”

Bitty gave up, and they all started the preparations. Leah had made a big chunk of the work the day before, but she needed to tend her turkey to make sure it was perfect, and had a hundred last-minute things to fix for the 20-adults dinner – next to her, Bitty had his two loyal commis, Jack who was peeling all the fruits, vegetables, cucurbitacin that were put in front of him, and Helena who was trusted with a metal fork and butter in a bowl with the very important mission to cut and mash it.

“Is it really useful?” Leah asked Bitty, shushing.

“Not at all, but that’s how she’ll learn to help out. I guess.”

The kids were dispersing after a while, and Louis began to cry, so Leah and Jack left to go take care of them all – leaving Bitty and Eric in the kitchen, alone.

Bitty stopped cutting the potatoes then, and he looked at his cousin, and he asked:

“Why did you invite, us, Eric?”

Eric stayed focused on what he was doing.

“You’re my cousin and I missed you. We call and send each other e-mails regularly, I wanted to have you over.”

“It’s been four years – since I got married – that we only communicate from far away, because I never came back to Georgia, you never came to Providence – well, now, Montreal. So. Why inviting us, _now_?”

“My… Best friend came out.”

Bitty didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at Eric. His best friend, Dani, had been one of the football players with Eric back when Bitty was in high school. A decent guy, that Bitty talked with a few times.

“He came here one night two months back, it was clear he had been sobbing for hours – for days. He was a wreck. He told me his best friend killed himself. What best friend, I asked. Dani had lived in Atlanta for a while, after school – he went to gay bars, gay spaces, he made a lot of gay friends, including this guy. And he never told me. He never told anyone, when he came here to visit, and even less when he moved in in the next town over for work – he just commuted to Atlanta every week to visit his friends and live his life. The death of his best friend – it was too hard for him to take. He came out to his parents, whom he lived with, and they threw him out. He told me he came here, thinking I’d do the same, so he could have a clean cut, you know? Then he’d quit his job and he’d go to Atlanta.”

“You didn’t kick him out.”

“No. I told him to take one of the two guest rooms and that he was leaving here now. He’s still here – he’s at work this morning, he should arrive in the middle of dinner. I feel like I’m rediscovering my best friend. And I thought, a lot, about what he expected me to do, about how he could think that of me. I thought a lot and I want to be a good dad for my kids. I want them to know that if they’re gay, if they’re trans, it’s okay; I want them to know that if they aren’t, people who are are okay. I… I don’t want to be like your parents.”

Ouch. Fair enough.

“You only do that for your kids?”

“No. As I said, I thought a lot. About what I did. I thought that I was enough of an ally, you know? Because I never _did_ anything homophobic, never _said_ anything. But it wasn’t enough. You were my closest cousin, and you felt like you couldn’t tell me. Dani is one of my best friends, and he felt like he couldn’t tell me, he hid it to me, and he only told me when his life got wrecked and he needed help, and when he told me, it was as if he was ripping off a bandaid and he just expected everyone to get rid of him at the same time. I want to be better than that, because it’s not enough. I realised I was excluding you and instead, I was still surrounding myself and my kids with closed-minded people just because they’re family. I told my kids after each family dinner, ‘_I know Auntie said ‘carpet muncher’ but it’s a bad word, you shouldn’t use it’ _but really, what was I showing them? What I was showing everyone? Not saying anything and not doing anything actively homophobic or racist isn’t enough. You have to proactively do good things. So I cut off anyone in the family that vocally had a problem with you or my new roommate, and I made it clear when inviting people that this bullshit won’t fly here. Your parents and Moomaw still insisted to be here, so. I hope they’ll be on their best behaviour.”

“I’m not scared of that, they won’t cause a scene – they wouldn’t dare, not in public.”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

* * *

Soon enough, Suzanne and Coach arrived with Moomaw and Aunt Judy (Eric’s mom), and everyone else. At the sound of the first cars, in the driveway, Jack tied Louis up on his chest, before it came to anyone’s mind to play Pass-The-Baby.

Stanley was a charmer with the adults, as usual, and didn’t act to much as a terror around the youngest kids, thanks God. Her nickname failed to win unanimous support, though.

“Hey Helena… Come hug Moomaw!” Moomaw had said, her arms open.

“She only answers to Stanley,” Bitty corrected her.

“_Stanley?_ Why? It’s a boy’s name!” Uncle Terry said.

“Her Uncle Shitty decided to make it her nickname because she was born during what was supposed to be the Stanley cup finals,” Bitty shrugged, “you know, if there hadn’t been the whole pandemic. We honestly didn’t want to make it a Thing, but sadly said Uncle is now our neighbour and sees her every day, so…”

“And it’s a very nice name that she loves, so no need to change it,” Jack defended.

“Everyone! Let’s sit for drinks!” Leah called from the kitchen, cutting short the conversation.

Bitty and Jack sat near the end of the long table for twenty guests, saving a seat for Eric’s friend Dani next to them. Suzanne and Coach sat right across from them, cooing at Stanley who was pulling her dad’s pants - she was trying to convince her father she _needed_ to have orange juice _and_ Coke in her glass.

“How old is she now?” Aunt Judy asked.

“Two and a half,” Bitty replied, finally half-filling an orange juice glass and giving it to her.

“Merci toi…” Stanley said, carefully grabbing the glass like her life was on the line.

“’_Merci’_ ou ‘_thank you’_, buddy, pas les deux…” Jack tried to correct, but she was already leaving.

“You raise the kids bilingual?” Coach asked.

“Of course?” Jack replied.

“She just started a bilingual daycare,” Bitty said. “Then in kindergarten she’ll go to a French school, but they have a big emphasis on English lessons, because it’s Montreal…”

“Ah, we wanted to get the kids in a preschool with a lot of Spanish lessons,” Leah said. “We never got to have a spot.”

“Don’t tell me! We applied as soon as Jack had the confirmation he was playing for the Habs from this season, but it’s way too late of course. Not one spot in any Montessori daycare, regardless of how much we’re ready to pay for it. Thankfully we finally managed to snatch something last month, but it’s only for two half-days a week. We still sent her so she gets to socialise a bit, but thank God Jack’s parents are here to help out the rest of the time. Louis won’t get to start for at least six more months…”

“Montessori?” Cousin Eric asked. “Interesting. You’re sending them to a Montessori school after that?”

“Oh, no- We’re sending them to a Jewish school. Jack and Bob are both alumni, so it was way easier to sign up the kids there, let me tell you…”

“They spent a lot of time with Robert and Alicia…?” Suzanne asked. Or stated, Bitty wasn’t sure?

“Yes. They do?” he frowned, not sure he wanted to continue the conversation.

It was suddenly way tenser at this end of the table, until, thankfully, Eric’s friend Dani came back from work and diverted everyone’s attention. Aunt Judy and Leah started more interesting conversation topics, and Jack, who was feeling pretty out of place himself, couldn’t help noticing that Bitty was pointedly avoiding talking to his parents.

Thankfully for him, that’s when Louis started to stir and whine a lot in his wrap. Saved by the baby.

From the corner of his eye, Bitty saw it too, and he asked while signing for ‘bottle’ at the same time:

“You want a bottle honey?”

Louis just stirred more.

“I’m going to feed him,” Jack said.

“Oh, no, don’t worry-”

“I’m wearing him, just stay with your family, eh-”

“Just stay here sweetpea, you’re tired,” Bitty insisted, stealing the baby from the fabric on Jack’s chest and dashing out of the room before someone had the idea to stop him.

Bitty hid in the guest room once the bottle was warm. He just needed five minutes of silence.

He sat on the edge of the bed and he looked at his son who was eating like it was his last meal, wondering.

When he was himself three months and a half, where his parents ever expecting that at one point in his life, they wouldn’t see him for almost two years? That at twenty-seven, them and he would go almost no contact?

Probably not. What parent would expect that?

If you can’t expect that, should he prepare for it to happen to him too, in twenty-seven years… ?

It’s at this moment that two light knocks pulled him away from his thoughts, and the door opened, slowly, on his mother who entered the room.

“Hello sweetheart,” Suzanne gushed, crouching a bit to be at eye level with Louis. “You’re a handsome one, aren’t you?”

Objectively, Louis looked like a chameleon, with potchy skin and divergent eyes under baby glasses. And milk everywhere on the chin, like every time he was eating. Bitty wasn’t sure if his mother was truly full of unconditional love for this baby (because he knew that only him, Jack and Jack’s parents managed to find Louis beautiful) or if she was just trying to be polite.

“He is.”

“Beautiful eyes.”

“They are – he inherited of Jack’s thousand vision issues, sadly.”

“Can I- Can I feed him?”

Louis had finally settled down a little and had stopped being fussy and whiny - it had taken a whole nap against Jack’s chest during the meal, and being away from the noise in a calm room now that he was awake. He hated being passed around, and to be held by anyone that wasn’t Jack or Bitty (even Alicia or Bob cuddling him ended in tears more often than not). Considering that he had been restless since they left home, Bitty wouldn’t risk it.

“No, sorry. He’s finally calm, and he _always_ cry when he’s held by strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger – I’m his grandma.”

“You’re a stranger to him.”

Bitty was holding his mother’s gaze while saying that. He could see the flash of hurt in her eyes – only mirroring the hurt he had been feeling within himself, for those past years.

“Sweetheart… I try, really- believe me. It breaks my heart, to know that I have two grandkids, who live so far away, that I never get to see; that’s not the life I had envisioned, for you, for us. It breaks me that you keep me and your father so removed from your life.”

“Mother. If you only meet Louis today – if you’ve only seen Stanley twice before, in her two years and a half – that’s on you. That’s solely on you.”

“You moved all the way to Canada. Your father and I don’t have a passport, and it’s so far away, and-”

“And it’s a lot of excuses. It’s not that long, expensive, or complicated to get a passport. But you just want to complain to your church friends about your heartless son who doesn’t let you see your grandbabies. And you know what? You’re right to. Because even if you had a passport, even if you lived down the street – we probably wouldn’t let you see Stanley and Louis often. We definitely wouldn’t allow one minute of alone time with them.”

“How can you say that? We-”

“You _did not come to my wedding_, Mother. You let me hope until the last minute, until I was walking down the aisle arm in arm with Jack- But you never came. Because ‘it was too soon for you, you still needed to digest things.’ What. I’m gay. I was getting married to a man. I wanted you there. You didn’t come. You haven’t said me a word between my wedding and the moment you learnt about Stanley’s birth. You broke my heart, Mama – and you made me realise that you didn’t respect me, Jack, and our relationship, even if you hid it behind nice smiles and half-assed fake efforts. Because the way I lived my life didn’t go well with your opinions. If you don’t respect us, you can’t respect our kids. We don’t want you around them. You’ll never be a Moomaw to them, Mother – why would we let this happen? Just to set the kids up to their very own heartbreak when Grandma decides to cut contact because she’s disagreeing with our parenting choices, when she’s bored?”

“Dicky…”

“It’s either Eric, or Bitty. Richard isn’t my middle name anymore.”

“See, Dicky? You totally removed yourself from the family – changed your dad’s name, your family name-”

“_You did not come to my wedding_. It’s safe to assume you don’t want me in the family.”

“Eric, what can I do to fix what I’ve done?”

“Mother. It’s been four years and a half. I saw you three times in all those years, once for Stanley’s naming ceremony, once because Coach and you happened to be in Boston, and once here, now, at Cousin Eric’s for Thanksgiving. You made absolutely no effort to be in our lives. I’m not sure I want you to. I don’t want to cut contact, because you’re my mother, and I’m an idiot who hopes too much – but I’ll never trust you again.”

Louis had finished his bottle by then. Slowly, Bitty got up, holding his son tightly.

“We’re going to get some fresh air. He doesn’t like noise.”

It was still so warm outside. Way too warm, next to what he was used to back home.

Bitty tried not to cry too much while sitting on the porch, alone with his son on his lap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW; talk of homophobia, suicide. Avoid from "my best friend came out" to the paragraph break 
> 
> Summary; Cousin Eric's best friend came out and moved in with his family, and it made Cousin Eric realise he wasn't that good of an ally if he's just not being homophobiv and he's not proactively doing good thing for the LGBT community and people around him


	21. Uncle Pat's Exotic Far - November 2022

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it was harder than expected to find a U
> 
> hopefully the rest will come quicker, I know what I want to write.... except for W but that's a problem for future me

Bitty, Jack and the kids had two days in Georgia for Thanksgiving – as such, Cousin Eric proposed to bring them to Uncle Pat’s farm for Black Friday.

Uncle Pat was Suzanne and Judy’s younger brother, and he had recently bought? Inherited? Won at poker? the farm he had been working in.

Farm full of llamas and alpacas, if Bitty remembered correctly.

“Is it profitable, economically, to raise alpacas?” Jack had asked when Uncle Pat was giving them a tour.

“Not really. There isn’t really a big market for the meat, you can sell some stuff with their wool but you will never break the bank with it,” Uncle Pat explained. “It’s mainly tourist stuff. So we decided to turn the farm in a sanctuary and open it to the public – we open this spring, hopefully. And – as my wife is Australian, and I went there a lot, and I’ve seen the animals there and all, we decided to get some wallabies and kangaroos and a few emus.”

“Kangaroo?” Stanley asked.

“Yes honey!” Bitty, who was carrying her, said. “Like in the book we have at home.”

“Have you ever seen a real kangaroo?” Suzanne asked her.

Stanley looked at her Dada, full of questions.

“No, you haven’t,” Bitty told her.

“No,” she then said to Suzanne.

“Come on then! You’ll love them,” Aunt Kate said. “You know I had kangaroos who lived in my yard when I was your age?”

“Wo!”

Stanley was quickly put on the ground to run around when they arrived close to the first animals (some free roaming goats who tried to eat their pants), and Bitty inherited the task of carrying Louis because Jack was taking a thousand pictures.

Apparently, the baby wasn’t ready to be faced with emus, if the fact that he was too scared to even cry when staring at one was any indication.

“Oh, no, poor thing,” Suzanne cooed, looming over him.

“He’ll survive,” Bitty said. “You’ll survive buddy, won’t you?”

A few feet away, Stanley took advantage of the fact her Papa wasn’t looking closely at her to try to go under the fence of the kangaroos enclosure to see the animals from up close.

Maybe _she_ won’t survive.

“Stanley! Reviens ici tout de suite!” Jack yelled, managing to grab her before she ran into her demise.

“_Buuut_-_”_

Jack knelled to her level and started to explain to her in French why she wouldn’t be doing that, and Bitty just sighed. Stanley’s batteries were never running low. Never.

“You were the same when you were her age,” Suzanne laughed.

“Was I?”

“Yes. Your Daddy always had to run after you because you’d disappear in one second. We even thought about getting a leash for you! Your teachers would always complain about you not sitting still, and you were always climbing everything.”

“Well, ADHD does that to a kid, I guess,” Bitty shrugged.

“You don’t have ADHD.”

“I so have ADHD, mother. I got a diagnosis after college. The psychiatrist was so confused on how it hasn’t been noticed before, because it’s _bad_. For Stanley - she’s still too young to get an official diagnostic, but she probably inherited it from me.”

“She’s not talking much, though,” Suzanne pointed out, as Stanley was babbling to her Papa to tell him (hopefully?) that she understood she should not go under electric fences to pet Australian animals. “You learnt to talk well really early and you never shut up ever since.”

“We were a bit worried too but her paediatricians, both back in Providence and now in Montreal are not, so. Kids raised bilingual tend to talk later.”

“Mmh…”

Bitty stopped in the middle of the way, and he looked at his mother, frowning.

“What. You’ve got something else to criticise? Her diet, maybe? Don’t worry, it’s great, greenlit by doctors once again, even without meat. Or is the Montessori education not good enough? We only picked what was working for us and for her. Oh, perhaps the Jewish thing then-”

“Eric, stop that,” Suzanne said. “I’m just… I’ve never seen kids raised like that, that’s all. That’s not how we do it here.”

“_’Here’_ would probably gain to realise there’s several ways to do things,” Bitty defended, holding the baby wrap close to his chest.

“Eric. I am not criticising you.”

“You better not. You don’t know us.”

“Dicky, you stop that! I don’t need that, okay? It’s hard enough – not being close to my grandchildren, not even knowing their faces, because y’all are hiding them on Instagram… You need to live down the street like the other grandparents to see them, right?” 

“Mother. You made some choices that lead to y’all not being in our lives…”

“Ah, Miss Bittle! Come here for a picture!”

Bitty and Suzanne shut up immediately, to see Jack trotting towards them, his camera in hand and a big smile on his lips. Right behind him, Aunt Kate was with Stanley who was petting a wallaby and singing a song to it.

“Just go with them, I’m taking the picture,” Jack said, motioning Suzanne to go – which she did, not without throwing a (returned) death glare to her son, clearly implying that the conversation was not over.

When she was out of earshot, Jack said immediately:

“Bits. With all my love: calm your tits.”

“Calm your-? Jack. It’s 2022.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Jack continued, starting to take pictures. “Just; drop it. We’re only here for two days, so… Try to sit back and enjoy the trip, okay? You’re not going to be able to go over everything that went wrong with your parents _right now_, considering how stubborn you all are you’ll need _years_.”

“She had something snarky to say about _everything._”

“Yeah and I know you, you had something snarkier to say back. You all need some long, long, long conversations, but you won’t do it while you’ve got a baby strapped on your chest and a toddler having the best day of her life because there are _kangaroos_ everywhere around her. So now, go take happy pictures so I have something to look at when you’ll be in the plane back to Montreal and I’ll be all alone and miserable in my own plane to _Edmonton_.”

“Maybe.”

‘Maybe’ meant that Jack was 110% right, so he took it as a victory.

“You come too, okay? I want to have you with the kids near an emu as my new lockscreen,” Bitty said.

“Do you think emus would be good hockey players?”

“_Jack_.”

“I think they’d be great enforcers. Ruthless, and fearless.”

[Instagram pictures: 1st is Stanley with Suzanne and Aunt Kate, petting the wallaby. 2nd is baby Louis being hold by Bitty and Coach on top of a brown alpaca. 3rd is Stanley eating some carrots sticks, 4th of everyone eating on the tables set outside right by the emu enclosure. 5th is a selfie of Jack, carrying Louis, and a llama photobombing them right behind Jack’s shoulder.]

**jlz-private_** took the kids to the farm today

Liked by **dadbobzimmermann** and 6 other people

**not-bitty-second-account **aawww missing you already 😢😢😞good luck on your roadie

**holsteradamholster **lol thinking about reconverting in an exotic farm owner zimmermann

> **not-bitty-second-account **he asked way too many questions for me to think he could have any other plans
> 
> **oluransom **with those glutes youll make some hella sexy farmers, the both of you
> 
> **dadbobzimmermann** yes!!!
> 
> **jlz-private_ **father do not talk about my or my husband’s glutes thank you

_Bitty created the chat_

_Jack, Mama, Coach have been added_

_Bitty_  
>> [Bunch of pictures of today with Suzanne, Coach and the kids]

_Suzanne_  
> Thank you

_Bitty_  
>> [A few other pictures, more or less recent of Louis and Stanley]  
>> you can print them for yourself but we don’t want to see them anywhere on the internet

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://insertatitlehere.tumblr.com/)   
[Other OMGCP works](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Bfandom_ids%5D%5B%5D=1147379&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&commit=Sort+and+Filter&user_id=emimix3)


End file.
